I wanted to try out some of his techniques and I thought that perhaps the skyscrapers in the Umeda area of Osaka might be a place to try. There’s something about Osaka that is strongly reminiscent of Bladerunner, Gotham or other dystopian visions. It’s ironic really, as it’s quite a nice place, if a little impersonal. Anyway, after looking at various angles, I came to a crossing beside the Grand Front South Tower and it seemed to have the atmosphere that I was looking for. It’s sad that with all this amazing architecture in the area, few people seem to look up; a few people even seemed to be confused about why I would want to photograph it…
I set the aperture to f16 to give me a wide depth of field and put the camera on a lightweight tripod to allow me to set the camera at 100 ISO to keep the levels of noise down. That gave me a shutter speed of 10 seconds, and although at meant that the people at the bottom of the shot blurred out a bit, I don’t think it detracts too much from the shot. The building has a very futuristic look to it, so I tried to bring out some of the blue/grey tones in Lightroom while keeping a little more warmth towards the bottom of the frame. Overall, I’m reasonably happy with the result, but it’s just a first attempt at this kind of thing and I think there is plenty of room for improvement.